Better living through empiricism

Politics

June 25, 2018

I’m happy to do my best to help friends find candidates, including different candidates than my favorites. I’m primarily focusing on my home county of Montgomery, though many of the resources work for other parts of Maryland or even D.C. Montgomery County is presently providing a case study for why we need ranked choice voting or other systematic reforms, as is many of the victors are likely to have below 30% of the vote. Nonetheless, local elections, even in large counties like Montgomery, are a great chance to make your vote count.

Mini-ad: If you’re reading this before Saturday June 6th, please consider stopping by our humble abode sometime between 6 and 8 pm for a meet and greet for Hans Riemer, the one incumbent county council candidate, for a chance to ask about your concerns, hear his goals, and dine on wine, cheese, and other refreshments.

Non-partisan and Journalists

Vote411.org for candidate answers to topical questionnaires, as provided to the League of Women Voters.

Helpfully, Bethesda Beat is reporting who on the range of endorsements received for County Executive/Council/School Board and Congress/General Assembly. This can be useful both for finding your favorite group, or just seeing which candidates have enough support to be serious contenders if you wish to be strategic with your vote.

Hans Riemer is the only incumbent and I think his record can be shown in a variety of the successful initiatives to make our communities more walkable and safe for biking. Beyond his vital support for the Purple Line, he’s championed initiatives like the expanded county earned income tax credit and improving transparency and efficiency of county administration. For beer fans, he’s also reformed our liquor laws to allow for the now booming local craft beer industry.

Evan Glass has long been a leader in our community. One of the political causes you’re more likely to know him from is his time as a board member for Equality Maryland. He’s also been a Producer on CNN and is the executive director of the Gandhi Brigade Youth Media, which gives some of the young people of our community the chance to gain skills and learn to be reporters or advocates. We saw one of their films a couple months back and it was really well done. Finally, he’s vice chair of Montgomery Housing Partnership and takes the affordable housing issue very seriously. He would also be the first openly gay person to serve on the Council.

Will Jawando’s special strength, according to a dear friend and transit advocate, is to bring a range of communities together. His lit emphasizes widespread economic opportunity, through mechanisms like smart growth, support for child card, and counter harassment measures. He and Hans are both on the teachers’ Apple Ballot.

Jill Ortman Fouse is coming with experience from the Board of Education. Aside from a brief Silver Spring encounter I haven’t had the chance to chat with her, but a friend praised her tenure on the Board of Education for being “evidence-based and transparent” and “100% for making sure all kids in MoCo succeed.”

I’ve had the chance to have good discussions with a few other candidates who were all on the GGW shortlist but not in the top 5.

Chris Willheim (+++ from ACT), I met at a friend’s meet and greet a few months back and he was conversant in a wide range of issues. He has experience as a legislative staffer and a teacher, the latter of which was particularly important to many of his ideas and reflected in his Apple Ballot endorsement.

Seth Grimes (++++/- from ACT) I’ve had the chance to speak with on the Metro and at ACT repeatedly. He has experience as Takoma County Councilmember and I found him quite conversant on the issues.

I had the chance to speak with Bill Conway (+/- from ACT) about the Purple Line when he attended an Action Committee for Transit meeting. He has experience as a Senate staffer and environmental lawyer and was conversant on the issues and supportive.

I spoke briefly with Gabe Albornoz (+/- from ACT) at the Silver Spring Metro one morning. I was pleased by his statements in support of the Purple Line and that we need to address the housing supply problem. His Recreation Department experience is also valuable.

District 5

Tom Hucker is the incumbent and his strongest challenger is running against bus rapid transit on 29. I’m certainly a bit biased since marrying into a Howard County family and having had an apartment in White Oak some years back, but I think that’s an important project both for today’s component and the eventual connections to Howard County, which includes connections to Columbia as part of its long term masterplan.

June 10, 2018

I’m happy to do my best to help friends find candidates, including different candidates than my favorites. I’m primarily focusing on my home county of Montgomery, though many of the resources work for other parts of Maryland or even D.C. Montgomery County is presently providing a case study for why we need ranked choice voting or other systematic reforms, as is many of the victors are likely to have below 30% of the vote. Nonetheless, local elections, even in large counties like Montgomery, are a great chance to make your vote count.

Mini-ad: If you’re reading this before Saturday June 6th, please consider stopping by our humble abode sometime between 6 and 8 pm for a meet and greet for Hans Riemer, the one incumbent county council candidate, for a chance to ask about your concerns, hear his goals, and dine on wine, cheese, and other refreshments.

Non-partisan and Journalists

Vote411.org for candidate answers to topical questionnaires, as provided to the League of Women Voters.

Helpfully, Bethesda Beat is reporting who on the range of endorsements received for County Executive/Council/School Board and Congress/General Assembly. This can be useful both for finding your favorite group, or just seeing which candidates have enough support to be serious contenders if you wish to be strategic with your vote.

March 10, 2017

My father, Harry Sanders, passed away seven years. As those that know my family are aware, he was a key advocate from the start, three decades ago, for the Maryland Purple Line, a light rail line connecting Bethesda, Silver Spring, College Park, and New Carrollton. God willing and the court system allowing, we’re six some years from opening day.

From the County Council and Executive to his legion of friends and colleagues, all the remembrances in 2010 included his devotion to improving transportation alternatives in our region as a citizen-activist that made people feel good about engaging in politics. I’ve been thinking a lot about that legacy in recent months and striking the balance of being indefatigable in pursuit of the public good, listening to a range of voices including opponents, and encouraging the next generation of activist.

Today, I’ve taken inspiration from the news that the Riverdale Park station will be a the boon it was meant to be, thanks to committed activists, elected leaders, and tireless staff work by both the private and public sector. It’s a reminder of what he was fighting for and what so many others have worked so hard to bring us to the cusp of delivering. Politics is full of loss and setbacks, we need friends and fellow activists to renew and carry on. Dad taught me that, but every week someone reminds me of it. I’m grateful for to so many. For those fellow transit advocates that knew him, I’m sure he’s proud of all the work you’ve done these past seven years. To all those seeking to connect our communities who never had the chance to meet him, you have my thanks.

Photo Credit: Purple Line NOW! Archives of the New Carrollton Locally Preferred Alternative Announcement in 2009.

June 07, 2015

I recently saw a horror play that, with the exception of an amazing entrance and particularly clever scene or two, didn't do that much for me. That's just a matter of taste; when I want to be made uncomfortable and a little scared, I want the focus not on supernatural monsters but frightening topics with which I actually wrestle. The Shipment's genuinely dangerous topic is focused on the African-American experience as perceived from within and without with special attention to portrayals in the culture.

Let's get a disclaimer aside: if you aren't at some level able to handle sustained vulgarity, skip this one. The stand up comic scene near the beginning is too much to handle otherwise. Similarly if uncomfortable but entertained and bracingly toyed with but in good hands isn't a place you want to be for 90 minutes, then it's not for you. However, if you dare brave experimental theater, know that this is a 90 minutes of entertainment that is very attuned to craft, entrancing dance, multilevel portrayals, and moments of great wit and beauty.

For a full discussion you can see the Post's review or an even more detailed review of an earlier production in the Root. The short version is that this is a variety show that wrestles with the format of minstrel shows past and some of their present descendents. The five players take a variety of roles which echo one another. This isn't a parody primarily concerned with an arch version of a particular story; it's outright satire and far more vicious to its source material. This can easily misfire, but with playwright Young Jean Lee and director Psalmayene 24 we are in able hands. Changes of scene bring new provocations, but also relief.

As an audience member, particularly in the first half, I felt connections as much to the five actors as to the characters they played. Particularly in the middle section, a stylized take on an after school special on urban African American poverty, each character was played one step removed with tactical choices made on when to commit and when to stick with stylized and stilted portrayals. In much the same way that a favorite comedian can bring a range of history to even a thinly sketched character, this kept me engaged with the actors when a lesser performance would have just had me alienated from the characters. The play doesn't wallow in ironic distance. That would be too easy. Instead it walks a thin line of discomfort as Shannon Dorsey plays a conventional mother character at the start of the scene only by the end to tell an absurdist parable of the origin of a very damaged world through the lives of disfigured cranes. Similarly Mark Hairston's earnest and emotionally vulnerable prison radical is a very different approach on sentiments earlier expressed by his shock comic.

The second half, after an achingly beautiful vocal performance and a scene changing palette cleanser, gives the cast a chance to play what seems a more conventional parlor comedy. Mark Hairston goes from earlier broad character types to a vey specific neurotic partygoer who, despite his insistence that he read a study that seltzer water might rot your bones, portrayed the sort of very real person I'd want as a guest. Gary L. Perkins III similarly went from a stock character rap inguéne to the person who was slightly too good for the party, an outsider there in part because the host

liked him more than his actual friends. Dexter Hamlett goes from an oft malevolent puppet master to a character whose secret puts him in somewhat in the power of another, at least when it comes to picking the evening's entertainment. The other two players take a similar turn, but to learn why the cast is only allowed real depth at the end, I'd recommend watching the play yourself.

So how did it rekindle my love of satire? Like one of my fellow audience members, I tended more towards to British than American satire, probably in part because the distance makes it easier. I do enjoy the Daily Show and Colbert, but that's less often work that I'm directly implicated in and discomfort more often comes from interviews and the interaction of people out of character with those in character. By comparison, actively uncomfortable satire has also been particularly prominent in our culture of late as a catchall defense for offensive speech or discussion of French satire after the murders of Charlie Hedbo staff. That said, the most insightful piece I'd read recently was by Film Critic Hulk on Fight Club (warning, caps). A key insight from that piece is that a failing of Fight Club is that it is too compelling in terms of the nihilism it is sending up. He compares David Fincher's work to Paul Thomas Anderson, who "implicitly understood that in order to undo the seduction and allure of his pornographic inclinations in Boogie Nights, he essentially had to spend half the length of the film completely undoing that. He clearly understood the responsibility not to being indulgent."

I think everyone involved with this production understood that responsibility and took it very seriously. I meant it when I called the production dangerous at the start. There weren't any walkouts the night I went, but that's not true every night. This would be easy material to botch at any stage of the production and even though I found it successful and discomforting, an African-American woman in the audience who made the earlier comment about satire also found herself angered by the stand up comedy bit and felt it punched down at times. This is an area where I think Forum Theater's after-production discussions really shine. Dramaturge led up a strictly voluntary chat with about a half dozen of the audience members. I think it's important that art challenge us, but Forum understands the responsibility of satire in my view. I particularly appreciated actor Dexter Hamlett joining the conversation, although I did not fully recognize him at first as he shed at least ten years when he went out of character. I do think that the way we talk about race has changed some since the play was first written, and the way the stand-up trades on a range of taboos may now distract from rather than heighten some of the power of the scene (there's a line about walking on eggshells that made the whole bit worthwhile to me). But every part of this play left me with moments I hope to long recall. If you'll be anywhere near Silver Spring, go see it. If you miss this show, check out the Forum's future offerings. They've never let us down.

December 26, 2014

The news earlier this month was not promising for the Purple Line. Incoming Gov. Hogan is skeptical of mass transit, favoring road projects. As David Albert discussed months ago, the governor of Maryland does have significant budgetary powers and could substantially stymie the project, albeit at the cost of federal matching funds. However, in the season of hope, there are reasons not to despair. Since the election, we've seen three important signals as to why the project is still alive and why the Governor-Elect may consider funding it:

The Governor-Elect has said he will make decisions about the Purple Line after his inauguration, likely within the next month or so. This coming period is a great time to let the transition team (info@hogantransition.com) know that you support the Purple Line. Purple Line Now has a sample letter up as well as links to a variety of facts about regarding the economic benefits of transit and the importance of our region. Emails from parts of Maryland other than Montgomery and Prince George's Counties are particularly valuable, so if that's where you live, be sure to mention that. Otherwise, this is a mass drive: the most important thing is to write polite supportive notes and to click send rather getting stuck on polishing. The emails we send won't by themselves carry the day, but they will show the firm popular foundation underlying the economic case.

November 06, 2014

The Maryland Democratic Party was humbled on Tuesday. Governor-Elect Hogan managed to get a substantial victory, performing well across the state. This wasn't just a matter of the general Republican wave, as Brian Frosh is now Attorney General-Elect and Maryland's economy has been over-performing the national under Gov. O'Malley.

The incoming Governor deserves credit for staking out an agenda, however much I disagree with it. It is not enough to point out differences on social issues when one's opponent is not running on them and the legislature is not in play. Similarly, we Democrats in Maryland and around the country need to do a better job of providing a clear economic agenda. Fundamentally, even though the national economy is improving, these remain troubled times with stagnating wages. Democrats cannot hope to prevail unless we offer answers on these questions. The increasing nationalization of even gubernatorial races means we can't sit on our laurels even when the results are positive.

I was fairly frightened as to the fate of the Purple Line going into the election. Thankfully, Governor-Elect Hogan's initial words and deeds have lived up to his campaign pledge to be willing to work with Maryland's Democrats. Despite the fears that I shared, his initial take on the Purple Line is that "we're going to be talking about that during transition." There's a lot for him to take on during that period and taking his time and reviewing the range of active and ongoing projects from the O'Malley administration makes sense. He has appointed a Democractic co-chair of his transition team which offers valuable opportunities in living up to his stated goal of being "a governor for all of Maryland."

To be clear, the onus is on Purple Line advocates more than ever to explain the virtues of the project. This is a duty I do not intend to shirk and I hope we can all come together to continue to build a brighter future for the state we love.

November 03, 2014

I hope all U.S. citizens vote tomorrow. I recommend Vote411.org as a way to help you get information about your polling place and learn the candidates' stands on the issues.

One race particularly important to me this year is Maryland's gubernatorial election where Lt. Gov. Brown (D) faces off against Larry Hogan (R).

Hogan is explicitly an enemy of the Purple Line:

Hogan says he would put a far greater priority on building and repairing roads than on mass transit. He pledges to block two major light-rail projects: the Purple Line in the Washington suburbs and the Red Line in Baltimore.

Hogan's emphasis on new roads ultimately does not make sense. Vehicle Miles Traveled are down across the country. Infrastructure repair is important and specific projects might be worthwhile, but Hogan is pursuing road building as a culture war issue rather than an governing agenda for Maryland that actually makes sense.

By comparison, the Purple Line and Red Line are near ready for construction start. The economic benefits are immense, especially at a time where the construction market has yet to fully recover and interest rates are low:

69,300 daily riders.

$3 in economic returns anticipated for every $1 invested.

17,000 cars off the roads in the Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.

Completion of the Capital Crescent trail.

2,380 to 4,140 new jobs for every $100 million of cost.

The Maryland governor is entirely capable of putting a project like this on hold. For those of you Marylanders will not directly benefit from the transit, this is still an investment in the state's long term future. Much of the funding comes from the federal government, with $800 million in federal matching funds to help build it. The economic activity generated will support the state's tax base and among other things help keep tuition low at Maryland's university system, a particularly remarkable accomplishment of the O'Malley-Brown administration when much of the country was experiencing jumps in public school costs. The Lt. Governor has taken his hits, rightfully, on the healthcare website debut. That ship has been righted, but for those with ongoing concerns about implementation I'd point to his own Lt. Gov. candidate, Howard County's Ken Ulman. As a present resident of Howard, I've got to say I've been consistently impressed by our young executive. I hope he has the chance to serve the state as a whole as well as he's served Howard County.

In closing, I certainly confess to being a partisan Democrat. But I'm also a proud Marylander. I think our state has managed great things in these past eight years, even when the national situation had headwinds against us. I'm asking Marylanders to vote for the Lt. Gov. because he'll build on the successes of the O'Malley administration and not undercut our economic future to fight culture war battles over infrastructure. I know this election can feel like there's not much as stake, but when it comes to the Purple Line, the opposite is true.

Speaking for myself and not my employer. Similarly, I'm not speaking for any non-profits I volunteer for. That said, Kate does back with me!

In the end, aren't the president's personal convictions all that prevent any military operation from escalating?

It's a fair point, and I'm glad he brought it up. The answer, I think, lies in congressional approval for military action, and this is one of the reasons I think it's so important. If Obama is truly serious about not sending combat troops into ISIS-held areas in Iraq, then let's get a congressional resolution that puts that in writing. Let's get an authorization for war that spells out a geographical area; puts a limit on US troop deployments; and specifically defines what those troops can do.

Would this be airtight? Of course not... But nothing is airtight—nor should it be. It's always possible that events on the ground really will justify stronger action someday. However, what it does do is simple: It forces the president to explicitly request an escalation and it forces Congress to explicitly authorize his request. At the very least, that prevents a slow, stealthy escalation that flies under the radar of public opinion.

Presidents don't like having their actions constrained. No one does. But in most walks of life that deal with power and the use of force, we understand that constraint is important. Surely, then, there's nowhere it's more important than in matters of war and peace. And that's one of the reasons that congressional authorization for war is so essential.

Would the United States providing more arms to the FSA have accomplished these goals? The academic literature is not encouraging. In general, external support for rebels almost always make wars longer, bloodier and harder to resolve (for more on this, see the proceedings of this Project on Middle East Political Science symposium in the free PDF download). Worse, as the University of Maryland’s David Cunningham has shown, Syria had most of the characteristics of the type of civil war in which external support for rebels is least effective. The University of Colorado’s Aysegul Aydin and Binghamton University’s Patrick Regan have suggested that external support for a rebel group could help when all the external powers backing a rebel group are on the same page and effectively cooperate in directing resources to a common end. Unfortunately, Syria was never that type of civil war.

So put me in the skeptic camp on the benefits of striking Syria. I was less skeptical with the war in Libya, but I take the same position now as I did then: if the President thinks this is a good idea, then take it to Congress. It's in the Constitution for a good reason and there aren't any circumstances that prevent it. Were I in Congress, I'd be inclined to vote no absent notable constraints. However, I'm in the minority there apparently, so what's the harm in asking?

June 24, 2014

Not all the races I’m watching are done yet, but from what’s known I’ll be happy to support Maryland’s (and specifically Montgomery and Howard’s) slate of Democratic candidates. This isn’t that surprising of a result to me, as most of the races had a lot of strong contenders and even many of the candidates that did not make the cut this year should be proud on a race well run.

I feel rather lucky to be alive in this period of Maryland history. There’s still a general election to win, but I think the theme for the next four years really has to be state-level execution. We’ve made some real strides, but the Silver Spring Transit Center and the first round of Health Care website problems show that we can sometimes mess ourselves up without needing much help from Republicans. We have a chance to be a hopeful example to a divided nation, but we have to bring our A-game. Let’s start by building the Purple Line now!

June 23, 2014

I’m rather happy with my choices this year. Maryland, my present home of Howard County, and my birthplace of Montgomery County have all been well governed for the past few years. There’s been a exception or two, mostly notably the health care website, but it seems like that’s under control now.

So, if you have any races you still need information on, allow me to recommend Vote411.org. That has the candidates answers to pertinent questions for races at all levels of the ballot. That’s not just MD, check it out for any U.S. election (though obviously many elections have already happened or may not be tomorrow).

So, speaking strictly for myself, and not for my organizations or employer, and certainly not for the League which doesn’t do endorsements, here’s the Action Committee for Transit scorecard for Montgomery County and various statewide races (scroll to the second page for state government stuff). One of the candidates did object to the scoring, here’s a discussion by David Alpert of GGW on what goes into that sort of thing.

If you favor building the Purple Line, now, then please allow me to point you towards two County-Council-At-Large candidates in particular: George Leventhal and Hans Riemer. Both have been with us from the start and push for the line even when inconvenient. As the ACT scorecard shows, the Purple Line has many friends in Montgomery and I’m grateful to all of them. However, I wanted to emphasize those two as I hear the at-large race is pretty competitive this year and I want to be sure they stick around.

Hope your election day experience is or was a good one and that turnout is high for an off-year.

October 01, 2013

At long last, after years of vitriolic opposition, America is finally joining the ranks of the other developed nations and offering a rudimentary form of universal health care to her citizens. While there’s sure to be some rollout technical glitches and such, HealthCare.Gov, the site for those without employer plans to comparison shop for healthcare insurance and see what subsidies are available, is now online. [The plans, start on January 1, 2014, so most people will probably wait until December, but consumers can start checking them out now.]

So between now and the 2014 elections, the public will get a chance to try out the Affordable Care Act and see if they like it. If they do, then universality will be the foundation for our healthcare system. If they don’t, then Democrats will lose big, as we should. A minority of House Republicans, with the backing of the Speaker, are utterly desperate to prevent the public from seeing the benefits of a law that has already passed. That is what the government shutdown fight is about and what the debt ceiling fight is about.

The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to....

Make sure that the working poor don't have access to affordable health care. I just thought I'd mention that in plain language, since it seems to get lost in the fog fairly often. But that's it. That's what's happening. They have been driven mad by the thought that rich people will see their taxes go up slightly in order to help non-rich people get decent access to medical care.

But they are failing. We held the line. Now we just have to minimize the damage that their sabotage will do to the nation.

As ever, speaking for myself, and not the employer. Title from a catchy Ari DeFranco song that Monica introduced me to. [It isn’t actually that appropriate to this crisis, but I like the song. I’ve also fixed a few typos(with Kate’s help) after posting.]

August 18, 2013

Cutting off aid is mandated by law after a coup. As a general principle, I’m not fond of the executive branch overriding or evading constitutional laws. Nonetheless, I think the administration’s buying time by not making a declaration may have been forgivable if the Egyptian government took the deal that the U.S. and partner nations mediated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Thus, I think we should obey the law and cut off non-democracy building aid to Egypt (which is the vast majority of our aid; even our non-military aid is mostly economic). We need not oppose their attempts to gain IMF aid nor seek sanctions against them, but unless and until the distant prospect of a genuine civilian democratic rights-respecting government emerges we must cut them off as a client.

The expert I trust most on these issues is Marc Lynch, although I recommend the Arabist for a great collection of regional reactions on Middle East issues, with the note that I will regularly disagree with some of the sources they pull in but it’s important to be aware of opinions you disagree with. Lynch also has his own round up over on Foreign Policy. Now that I’ve laid out my sources, I feel I can safely endorse Lynch’s pessimistic read of the effects of cutting of aid:

These steps won't matter very much in the short term. Cairo has made it very clear that it doesn't care what Washington thinks and the Gulf states will happily replace whatever cash stops flowing from U.S. coffers. Anti-American incitement will continue, along with the state of emergency, violence and polarization, the stripping away of the fig leaf of civilian government, and the disaster brewing in the Sinai. It won't affect Secretary of State John Kerry's Israel-Palestine peace talks and the Camp David accords will be fine, too; Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can't manage his own streets, and it's unlikely he wants to mess with Israel right now.

The hard truth is that the United States has no real influence to lose right now anyway, and immediate impact isn't the point. Taking a (much belated) stand is the only way for the United States to regain any credibility -- with Cairo, with the region, and with its own tattered democratic rhetoric.

The benefits may go beyond a slow start on restoring credibility, based on my past research on Egyptian aid. Past research by Steven Finkel for the U.S. Agency for International Development (PDF) found that democracy aid can be effective, but tends to be undermined in countries where the majority of aid goes to the military. That result is probably over-determined, but I’ve got one hypothesis I hope to explore in future work: namely that military aid is not apolitical in countries with weak civilian control of the military and in which the military is a major economic actor. Egypt certainly fits that bill on both fronts. While I don’t see them allowing real U.S. democracy building aid again anytime soon, we should stop giving the military an edge against other actors. Should we restore aid at some point in the future, the current approach to Pakistan where assistance is not funneled through the military may be a helpful model. Of course, if we move away from military assistance, that may hurt U.S. arms exports, but I think that’s a correct prioritization.

Finally, on a personal note, I suspect many of the people I met in Egypt, particularly the Coptics, victims in their own right, are now backing the crackdown. Even in those heady post-revolution days when we visited, the military was often above criticism. Moreover, while the Morsi presidency was actively sabotaged on political and economic fronts, his party worked hard to alienate and disempower everyone outside their immediate coalition. However, the coup was ill-advised because wide-spread violence was a predictable - and predicted - effect. With hope for reconciliation off the table and the U.S. distrusted on all sides, we are not in a position to make a positive impact, but we can start by not being complicit in a bloody mistake.

May 09, 2013

Tel Aviv is a beach town, not merely temperate and on the water. It has ample sandy shores immediately adjacent to downtown. Perhaps surprisingly, the beach monuments were among most political ones I noticed during my trip.

Tel Aviv is a young city, barely a hundred years old, but that's long enough. There were monuments to the Aliyah Beteffort from 1934 to 1948 to evacuate Jews from Mediterranean countries in defiance of a British restriction on their then-colony. There was another monument to the Altalena affair, a clash shortly after the British left between the recently formed Israeli Defense Force and a Jewish paramilitary group. The rest of the beach seemed apolitical, so perhaps this was just a coincidence of my hotel placement, but the underlying reality is that shores are often borders.

The other time politics notably intruded from the landscape was a trip to the kibbutz cemetery that took us closer to the West Bank. Like Canada, Israel is a bilingual nation, so there is both Hebrew and Arabic on highway signs. That said, unlike the vehement bilingualism I remember from Quebec, in Tel Aviv I mostly saw Hebrew and English (which seems in keeping with the education system). Guy was generally less political on most matters than I am, although he made clear that he was rather frustrated with the current state of Israeli politics, particularly the current generation of leadership.

However, don't let the politics discussion deter you. Both of my walks on the beach were lovely and the trip south to Jaffa was delightful. Surfers took advantage of the waves and trained on the beach. Small sailboats dotted the horizon. The buildings of Tel Aviv are a varied architectural backdrop from the skyscrapers of downtown to the mosque down by Jaffa. The last part of the walk was through parkland as the beach gave way to a rocky shore.

According to my walk book, the best time to do it would be sunset. That's probably right, but don't let that deter you if the timing doesn't work out. The journey is well worth it during the day, all the more so because it ends in Jaffa: the millennia-old sister to Tel Aviv, historical port to Jerusalem, Turkish-rebuilt hill city, and subject of my next post.

January 02, 2013

Update: The Baltimore office at least was closed on Thursday 1/3 but will be open tomorrow 1/4. The vote will be on [1/22], post-inauguration, although calling sooner is still probably better.

Senator Cardin apparently may be part of a bipartisan group opposing bringing democracy and effectiveness to the U.S Senate. In doing so, he risks blowing our one opportunity for the next two years to make progress. I had the alarm raised for me via email, but the story checks out according to Ben German of `the Hill:

A bipartisan group is offering Senate leaders a political compromise on filibuster reform as Democrats push to change rules that frequently require 60 votes to pass bills.

The group met Friday morning in the office of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, and plans to present its idea to the separate caucuses later in the day…

Lawmakers involved in the ad-hoc group, in addition to Kyl, Alexander and Cardin, include Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and, according to The Huffington Post, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

The filibuster as presently constituted does not work with European style parliamentary politics and as a result the Senate can't get anything done. The alternative to an effective legislature is not some panacea of democracy: it is the accrual of power to the executive branch. This is true whether the President is Republican or Democrat.

[The McCain proposal] is filibuster reform for people who don’t want to reform the filibuster.

In other words, it wouldn’t do much of anything. Unlike Sen. Tom Harkin’sreform proposal, it wouldn’t change the number of votes needed to break a filibuster. Unlike Sen. Jeff Merkley’s reform proposal, it wouldn’t require the minority to actually hold the floor and talk. And perhaps most importantly, it wouldn’t use “the constitutional option,” thus protecting the precedent that changing Senate rules requires a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority.

If you think the Senate is pretty much working well as is, and the biggest threat are the folks who want to change the rules, then this is the proposal for you. It lets people say they’re doing something to curb the abuse of the filibuster without actually doing anything at all. But if you think the Senate is broken, there’s nothing in here that would even plausibly fix any of its problems.

December 15, 2012

Thankfully, things do seem to be getting better on the overall assault death score. Nonetheless, it's vital to remember that the problem we face is far larger than even the terrible heart rending massacres. The chart below from Keiran Healy includes all assault deaths with gun deaths being a key driver. Of course, guns are not autonomous drones, they don't kill people of their own volition. Instead guns make it easy to kill people.

Ezra Klein has a good round up of facts about gun massacres. Whenever one of these occurs, you see suggestions that the solution is more guns. If that were true, wouldn't the U.S. be safer than other countries because we already have so many guns? Gun massacres, while being increasingly common in the U.S. still make up only a small percentage of the total annual blood toll our gun culture charges. At best, suggestions that we arm everyone would decrease the number of guns massacres while increasing the number of routine assaults which would naturally up the death toll.

Ezra Klein: Israel and Switzerland are often mentioned as countries that prove that high rates of gun ownership don’t necessarily lead to high rates of gun crime. In fact, I wrote that on Friday. But you say your research shows that’s not true.

Janet Rosenbaum: First of all, because they don’t have high levels of gun ownership. The gun ownership in Israel and Switzerland has decreased.

For instance, in Israel, they’re very limited in who is able to own a gun. There are only a few tens of thousands of legal guns in Israel, and the only people allowed to own them legally live in the settlements, do business in the settlements, or are in professions at risk of violence.

Both countries require you to have a reason to have a gun. There isn’t this idea that you have a right to a gun. You need a reason. And then you need to go back to the permitting authority every six months or so to assure them the reason is still valid.

The second thing is that there’s this widespread misunderstanding that Israel and Switzerland promote gun ownership. They don’t. Ten years ago, when Israel had the outbreak of violence, there was an expansion of gun ownership, but only to people above a certain rank in the military. There was no sense that having ordinary citizens [carry guns] would make anything safer.

Switzerland has also been moving away from having widespread guns. The laws are done canton by canton, which is like a province. Everyone in Switzerland serves in the army, and the cantons used to let you have the guns at home. They’ve been moving to keeping the guns in depots. That means they’re not in the household, which makes sense because the literature shows us that if the gun is in the household, the risk goes up for everyone in the household.

July 01, 2012

The Surpreme Court decision on universal health care was a frightening near thing. Four justices voted to find the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional and appear to be preparing a judicial assault against the New Deal. Chief Justice Roberts decision stepped us back from the brink of a Supreme Court legitimacy crisis, a change made perhaps at the last minute, although still a decision that will complicate future efforts to improve national programs that are implemented through the states.

The battle now proceeds to the election. This will be a hard one, thanks to difficult worldwide conditions and successful obstructionism by Republicans in Congress since the beginning of the crisis, economic recovery is slow in coming. As Dan Drezner notes, the U.S. is performing above par internationally, but the average American voter doesn't grade on a curve. I have no special insight into how to win that election so instead I"ll look at the topic of how did we win this round?

To answer that question, I turn to Will Wilkerson, a libertarian with liberal sympathies, who seems scornful of the win in a way that strikes me as informative:

Mr Roberts observed the livid reaction to Citizens United, as well as the liberal freak-out over the mere possibility of a ruling striking down Obamacare, and determined that prudent custodianship of the court called for a light, conciliatory touch. Indeed, my hunch (and none shall doubt my amazing intuition!) is that Mr Roberts may well have chosen to join his conservative colleagues had the court not lost so much public goodwill following the Citizens United decision…

Thus, all that was required to avert a looming "crisis of legitimacy" was to uphold Obamacare, for whatever reason, and Mr Roberts seemed to have known it. Mr Chait and his partisan allies clearly dislike the way in which Mr Roberts avoided the "crisis" of their collective tantrum, but the great relief that has now washed over them will be enough to keep them from attacking with full force the "bizarre and implausibly narrow reading" of the commerce clause which Mr Roberts just embedded more firmly in constitutional law.

This is a tradeoff I will gladly take. Achieving universal healthcare is no mere battle in building a more humane, it is the war. As Kevin Drum argues, the distinction between activity and inactivity never came up before and is unlikely to come up again. The practical result is that we will have to call things taxes in the future, scary I know, but the present Democratic party aversion to ever using taxes is on any but the top 1% was already unsustainable. We may yet lose the election, but Roberts had the votes to end it here and now via what James Fallows called a slow motion coup and he choose not to. We are a better country for that and we are a better country because liberal politicians and pundits were taking Michael Tomasky's fine advice and preparing to come out swinging. As Wilkerson notes, this wasn't a one off preparation either, the vehement reaction against Citizens United may not be enough to overcome the effect of big money donors but it did better prepare us for this fight.

In some ways, this recalls the bully pulpit strategy of presidential leadership: appeal to the public to move popular opinion and pressure members of the legislature. Political science has not found support for that idea. However, in part because supporters are defending an existing law rather than trying to institute change via the court, vehement arguments seem to have helped win the day. I'll keep an eye out for any further research on this matter, as I expect the minority mentioned above will be back for future attempts to roll back the welfare state.

May 04, 2012

Sympathetic antagonists are one of my favorite things in fiction, if for no other reasons then that they add variety to the stories. If the enemy is nihilist or totalitarian evil then their degree of success is just a matter of how dark the pieces is. However, if the threat actually has a sympathetic cause, in this case standing up for ordinary people in a city largely run by those with special bending abilities, then it is far from clear how things will shake out.

I don't want to get into too much speculation at this point. Let me just say instead that if you were a fan of the first series be sure to check out Legend of Korra. This is particularly easy because the episodes are available, with commercials, for free online. Coming in without having seen the first series won't tell you as much about the world and will indirectly spoil some things about the ending. However, if you don't have an easy means to get a hold of it then I'd say that the core plotline should be perfectly enjoyable and the 70 year time skip means that the world in question is a very different one.

April 24, 2012

I've been stockpiling these for a while. Some probably merit their own blog posts, but my new years resolution for this year was 'no more backlogs.'

Sara Robinson argues that we need to return to the 40 hour-week. Yes, techies too. She cites research that notes that we first adopted the forty hour limits for a mix of worker rights and productivity reasons. As a side note, I think it might make sense to extend the school day. However, teacher workloads and student homework assignments should be adjusted accordingly.

Mike Mitchell cites great artistic advice from Ira Glass. The short version is that when you start on any artistic project your ambitions won't match your taste. However, by completing many projects you can start to close the gap.

Fredrik DeBoer clips a bloggingheads.tv between Aaron Brady and Mike Konzcal arguing for keeping public universities public. This was in the context of the police crackdown against the occupy movement at UC Davis. This applied to a question at a Purple Line event this past year at the University of Maryland Campus. One of the student reporters had asked whether having the light rail on campus would allow non-students to access the campus at night (there's restrictions on those driving, but not walking, in). Fears about campus crime are not illegitimate, although there are real differences between having a car and coming in via transit such that at very least there's a transit driver that would likely see the riders. With that caveat out of the way, the question failed to recognize that public university campuses aren't a gated community, they are to serve the public.

January 18, 2012

EK: What makes PIPA and SOPA cluster bombs? If you agree there is a problem, why aren’t these acceptable solutions?

RW: PIPA and SOPA, at their heart, are censorship bills and blacklisting bills, and they undermine much of the architecture of the internet… What the bills do is say, when you get a court order, you can’t use the domain-name system to resolve to the IP address.

EK; When you say “resolve to the IP address,” exactly what that means. Let’s say I run EzraTube.com. And someone has uploaded copyrighted content to my site. What happens next?

RW: When you type EzraTube.com into your browser, your browser is asking Comcast to ask other servers where that goes. These servers basically act as phonebooks. What the so-called “DNS remedy” in the bill does is enable the attorney general to get a court order that tells Comcast, ‘when people want to find EzraTube.com, don’t send them there. Send them to a Department of Justice site instead.’ People who want to work around this would be able to. There are already third-party tools that use foreign servers or other domain-name servers outside of Comcast’s network. But that’s a problem because, for the last 15 years, we’ve spent all this time building the DNS system into a secure standard…

EK: As I understand it, another element of these bills is that they would move the burden of policing content to the Web sites themselves. Right now, YouTube, if alerted to pirated content, needs to get it down. Under SOPA and PIPA, YouTube would be responsible for making sure it never goes up in the first place, and liable if they missed a video.

RW: You are describing what I call the “turn Web sites into Web cops” provision. This is a provision that has raised concern about what this is going to mean for innovation. If you’re a small Web site trying to get off the ground and you look at that provision, you put people through this kind of legal burden, which will mean a significant amount of money for anyone trying something new, it will do a lot of damage to innovation. That’s one reason the venture capital folks are speaking out.

Programming note: Since this is a typepad blog and not a wordpress one, I don't see a quick and easy way to down it entirely [and frankly my readership is relatively small so I'm focusing on a call to action rather than get the tech right.]. So this post is my means of solidarity.

Left wing politicians like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich have embraced discussion of foreign policy and civil liberties, and for their trouble they have been dismissed as unserious by the self-same progressives who now dismiss Ron Paul's ideas…

That objection aside, the question Freddie raises at the end is well worth addressing:

I want those who profess belief in liberalism and egalitarianism to recognize that they are failing those principles every time they ignore our conduct overseas, or ridicule those who criticize it. What I will settle for is an answer to the question: what would they have us do? If you can't find it in you to accept our premises, at least consider what you would do if you did. For those of us who oppose our country's destructive behavior, there is no place to turn that does not result in ridicule…

I think the solution is primary challenges for members of Congress. Matt Yglesias and Freddie have disagreed about this point before but I think the key argument for congressional challenges is that they have a proven track record. The various conservative groups that now make up the Tea Party make regular use of primary challenges and have been rewarded with increasing ideological consistency in Republican Party.

This isn’t to say they haven’t overreached and cost the Republican party seats, it’s a tactic with clear limits. However, I think the experience on the Republican side, see the 1992 election, also indicates that Congressional challenges are far less likely to backfire than Presidential ones. Working on getting state government elected officials is generally a good idea but obviously isn’t that helpful for shifting foreign policy.

I think clear and enforceable red lines are another fairly effective technique. This means picking certain issues where disagreeing with your group means denial of funding or even actively supporting a replacement candidate. Part of the reason there’s such strong pushback against Rep. Paul is that he impressively manages to violate the redlines of almost every member of the liberal coalition. In the 2008 election, I’d say the anti-interventionist made fairly effective use of support for the Iraq war as a redline issue which is part of what got President Obama the nomination. I think that electoral effort deserves part of the credit for the fact that we’re did comply with our treaties and withdrawal the U.S. military (if not contractors) from Iraq.

This is actually an area where a fair amount of popular support is potentially available as both the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan lost popular support well before they lost elite support. Dan Drezner has argued that realism rather than liberal internationalism has more support among the American populace. To be sure, realism is not primarily concerned with preventing U.S. complicity in overseas violence but it is fairly consistently anti-interventionist in a way that does check liberal and neocon hawkery. I’d advise finding one or two policy statements that have support from a strong majority or vehement plurality in a fair number of states or Congressional districts. The anti-war movement probably doesn’t have the clout to raise their own challengers, but such criteria, if publicly applied, could help leverage existing resources by targeting them all at one race.

I think it would also be fair to withhold funding from any candidates, including President Obama, that violate your redlines. While I do have some strong objections to some of President Obama’s actions on civil liberties and foreign policy, I’m still willing to donate to him. However, I think redirecting donations of time or money away from a sitting Presidential candidate, even in a tough race, is a perfectly valid tactic for anti-interventionists. We all have to pick priorities.

January 01, 2012

Perhaps surprisingly, satire isn't really my genre. Nonetheless, I did enjoy In the Loop, a film take on the British series In the Thick of It, which I still have yet to see and really should.

The film covers the period of the lead-in to the Iraq War and thus unsurprisingly depicts a steady series of failures of politics. There's a fair range of personalities, none of whom cover themselves in glory, but who generally manage to ring true. The film also has an interesting comparative politics angle, as it looks at executive branch politics on the U.S. side while looking at the parliamentary politics angle on the British side.

Perhaps one of the better uses of the film is to better prepare ambitious naïfs to as to what they might be getting into. The title gets to the core challenge: staying in the loop, particularly if your tradecraft needs work, has high costs. The petty compromises the characters fall prey to are far more pervasive than even the commonly-depicted adulterous affairs of candidates, let alone the overly complex conspiracy theories of most political thrillers.

On the downside, the film certainly did not leave my wife feeling favorably inclined to my field of study or industry, but again, it's a film about the lead-up to the Iraq War; we know how that one turns out.

July 04, 2011

I've seen a few comics commenting on the oddity of the date, putting it at the start of the war and noting that it was still a premise and not a realized concept as of July 4th, 1776. I think the former is wrong, as the war had already started by the time of the declaration. The latter misses the point for humorous effect. The success of the Revolutionary war was critical for the U.S., of course. However, it was the principles of the Declaration of Independence, a document that was addressed to a global audience and that has proven a template for subsequent revolutions, that was truly important. While not flawless, I would even say that it would be the founding document most worth of celebration in its original form.

Now, for a song selection inspired by the Capital 4th fireworks tonight. Sadly the Takoma Park ones I'd meant to attend were scuttled by light rain.

April 22, 2011

Our trip to the Egyptian Museum took us through Tahrir Square twice, due to confusion about which entrance to use. The boundaries were a bit ambiguous: square is more of a figurative term, it is quite active, and there's multiple entrances. That final attribute and its centrality made it a hard-to-cordon-off gathering place. There were also any number of large buildings bordering the area which provide easy roosts for cameras and snipers.

However, that Sunday, it just seemed to be the vital center for the city's infrastructure, under construction but not revolutionary. As the news accounts have covered, the big protest day was Friday, which corresponds with Islamic services and, as a result, the main day off in Egypt. The prior week's protest had been preempted by the arrest of Mubarak, and I'm told that later this week the long standing and long hated emergency law was finally lifted. I don't know the status of the remaining political prisoners, since I've actually been catching less Egyptian news here than when I was home, but I suspect this should be a fairly effective sign of progress toward a more stable society.

The main exception to a typical city center square was the building that ha been the former home of Mubarak's National Democratic Party which went up in flames after the revolution started. Last I heard, there hasn't been any attribution of responsibility on that one, although the popular theory is that it was self-inflicted to destroy records. I've got no particular insight on that score, but I am rather curious what will happen to the building. It borders the Nile and is visible from the square, an it is obviously on a prime piece of real estate. I suspect whatever happens with the building, it will be a symbol of the larger fortunes of the party. Supposedly, this party has more of a chance in the upcoming elections as they're to be held in only six months. With the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, no other group has existing campaign infrastructure. However, that doesn't accord with what I've heard from some of the locals.

April 16, 2011

As I write this our Egyptian Air flight is passing south of Barrington en route to Cairo. I'd flown up to JFK, which had a nicer terminal than I expected and an unusual system of check-in desks at terminal four that seemed geared handling large numbers of passengers and easy reassignment of airline slots. As expected, I had to leave and re-enter through security which seems unnecessary but I did enjoy riding the air train between the terminals.

I believe I've managed to pack everything I need, about twenty-five pounds worth in my main bag and fifteen in my backpack, a good portion of that being my laptop. I would have liked to have done a more research on Egypt prior to the trip, although my obsessive following of the recent revolution means I know a reasonable amount about the present situation.

Reading the complimentary copy of the Daily News Egypt does bring home Egypt's status as a country that recently went through a revolution. In the day's news: eight of twenty six governors were fired, former President Mubarak remains detained for questioning despite claims of health issues, the treatment of 35 detained protesters is debated and a range of tycoons and former government leaders find their financial dealings investigated or their ability to leave the country denied. Critically though, it's a state more thrilling than frightening, the future is still unclear but disputes are of critical importance but appear to be handled through political and judicial venues. There's still much to be settled, but there's always something cheering about legal consequences for those once above the law.

While it's doubtless provincial to say so, I'm still impressed by international flights. The Spartan outlook of Southwest, my domestic carrier of choice, means that the TV screens, meals, and excellent features like under-seat outlets still strike me as extraordinary. We got a nice bag of freebies including a practical items like a toothbrush and toothpaste and a sleep mask, the ever popular standby of cheap headphones, and, to my surprise, a set of socks. There's also an under seat Ethernet plug but I have no idea if it's active, I'm told by a friend that I have a shot at wifi on my Lufthansa flight home but for now I'd say Egyptair has treated me rather well. Now I should probably get some sleep, as at this point it's 4:12 am Cairo time.

Theoretically they could end up working out a different compromise, but obviously this would be a huge blow to the momentum. If you want to call or email, here's the info. Here's a set of links to the Maryland Politics watch page on how people voted on amendments. At this point, any messages should probably have the dual purpose of encouraging voting on the final bill and not giving up if this one doesn't make it through. Setbacks can become defeats to easily.

"425 rights and protections come with a marriage license." Discussing medical decisions in a hospital, riding in an ambulance and other very personal matters. That's all we're asking is to protect our relationships and our commitment."

"Even if this bill doesn't pass, my wife and I will still be married whether [or not] you choose to protect us from tragedy."

"You can't stop us from loving each other. You can't stop us from pledging our love in from of God and each other. All you can do is make it worse for us in challenging times when life throws you curve balls."

"What we're asking for is equal protection under the law." "Choose love."]

March 08, 2011

Freddie over at L'Hôte raises an issue that I've heard of before, even if I haven't encountered it much:

I have recently fallen deeply in love with the British original series Skins, or at least, the first two seasons. (The show goes through different generations every two seasons, which is an admirable alternative to standard Saved by the Bell bullshit where people are in high school for a decade; I just don't know if I can watch different characters... too attached to the originals.) Anyway, this is a show that really needs the music it has in general, but most importantly, there is a use of a song at the very end of the first season that is so brilliant and unexpected and it's apparently just completely purged from the DVDs. Which is just not right.

He's aware of the bit torrent alternative, but prefers not to pirate. This reminds me of the problem encountered by Mystery Science Theater 3k. That classic parody show got the rights to old terrible films and then brutally mocked them. The trouble was, once the DVD era came out the license rights to old films went way up as suddenly reselling them was more of a possibility. The Rifftrax solution to this was to sell a soundtrack that could accompany a popular film that the viewer would buy separately. Thus it became possible to riff on films whose rights they could never afford, because the end-user was the one that did the combining.

I wonder if this could work with DVDs, particularly ones watched on the computer. The shows could provide an alternate soundtrack, sans music, and if do some virtual DJing to play the relevant music off of the users computer or a separately purchasable soundtrack if they so desired. They're often songs we own anyways in this age of digital music. I suspect, in practice, we aren't yet to the point where it's really practical. I haven't watched that many films at home of late, but even, to my chagrin, I think I've only done one Rifftrax. However, in the long term, that may be a way to finesse this problem within the law. I think most artists are strongly motivated to have their work disseminated in their preferred form, so even if this isn't a solution that would be widely used, it could meet a need for both the viewer and the artist. Alternately, distribution mechanisms like i-tunes could offer two versions of episodes and do the license management on the seller end. It sounds like paying an extra buck to get the original unbowlderized version would be well worth it in this case.

[Update: In theory at least, electronic media provides a range of options for putting the means of production in the hands of the average person, allowing this sort of craziness. In practice, I think the ease of piracy may end up precluding this as a means of remixing existing content. Even if you're wiling to pay, it's easier to just do the illegal thing than to do it right. However, ultimately, music producers are pricing themselves out of a market here so in theory there should be some sort of deal to be made. Back on the first hand, the recent history of copyright doesn't give me much hope as making reasonable deals hasn't been high on the agenda.]

March 07, 2011

The premise of the Adjustment Bureau is remarkable yet straightforward: a Senate candidate played by Matt Damon meets the potential love of his life played by Emily Blunt, only to be kept separate from her by a group of mysterious hat wearing men trying to keep things according to plan. I'd say the film is smart but not especially deep.

I think the film really works first and foremost because it actually takes the time to develop the characters of the Adjustment Bureau. Bland men in black would be an easy choice, as would scenery chewing, but instead Anthony Mackie, John Slattey, and Terence Stamp play subtle characters with distinct outlooks that are just trying to do their jobs. Similarly the rest of the supporting cast often exhibits more character than you see in primary antagonists in other films. Damon's Senator is quite a distinct character and his love interest Elise has enough depth to avoid the manic pixie dream girl problem. However, for me it was the Bureau that really enamored the film to me.

There were also many funny moments. In some ways, large portions of the film were really a romantic comedy. As with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there are genuine forces rather than plot-driven idiocy keeping the main characters apart. That intelligence, also shown in how the film plays around with its rules, allows for a fair amount of subtle humor and keeps us sympathetic to the drive of the main characters.

I don't think the film actually says that much about free will, but that's no surprise coming from me. However, I do think it is an interesting meditation on choosing a life in politics, authenticity, chasing greatness, and the opportunity cost of the big choices we make in life. The aspiring senator's political aspirations are fairly content-free, although that's part of the point. To some extent the public, and I definitely include myself and other wonks in that, may play the role of an Adjustment Bureau trying to build our perfect candidate at potentially great cost to themselves. I wonder to what extent that element resonates in countries that don't have a presidential political system.

March 04, 2011

The news is a bit better than Tuesday, from what I've heard from informed sources, the Speaker of the House of Delegates is now fully engaged and the bill should be able to get out of committee. The Governor has similarly again said he will sign the bill and called on the House of Delegates to pass it. However, that there will also be a floor fight which means that getting additional support from anywhere in Maryland will be valuable. If you want to help get the bill passed, today (Friday) really is the day to call/email and even better to ecnourage others to do so.

There's a big mobilization, so many of the delegates are just letting phone calls go to message. That doesn't man you aren't heard by any means. Doing both phone and email probably puts the most emphasis, but even email does help if you're more comfortable with that. Some Delegates are rather cool about being contacted: one of my own, Delegate James Malone gave a very supportive response and seemed very happy to hear from his constituents. He'll definitely have my support in the future and he has my thanks now, particularly as he'll also be supporting the anti-discrimination bill.

Advice for contacting:

It's best to be polite. People have been known to be switch sides because they don't like to be harassed. Also, specify where you live, as delegates care a lot about people in their own district. The email links above give you a starting email, some alteration at the top, saying why you personally care, results in a more effective argument. That said, I wouldn't agonize over it, these are probably going to be skim so individualize and then send is probably the best way to go.

High value targets:

Apparently Del. Arora will be voting to get the bill out of committee but may be voting no on the floor. So further contacts from District 19 in Montgomery (which goes from south of White Oak to North of Glenmont, check http://mdelect.net/ to be sure about your district. Del. Alston from Prince George's District 24 is probably another good target as she's now talking about only giving civil unions and to be frank this is Maryland, we're one of the more liberal states in the union, second class citizenship for gays and lesbians isn't good enough. [Update: Del. Alston said in an interview with Petula Dvorak that she'd support a switch to civil unions for everyone, getting the state out of the marriage business. That's a fine compromise but we're rather late in the game for that. This was really a discussion for back when she was co-sponsoring the bill.]. If you've got any friends and family in these areas, or just in a district where you aren't certain of yes votes, convincing them to call in can multiply your leverage on this issue. The House of Delegates is one of the easier bodies for citizens to influence as there's a fair number of members and they don't hear as much from constituents on these kind of issues. Try passing on some of the contact links above to make it as easy as possible but if they prefer to not go through an advocacy group you can always get the info from the House of Delegates website.

Arguments to use:

Maryland politics watchhas a good number as does Equality Maryland. Personal experience carries a lot of wait, especially when convincing other people you know, although obviously you know parents, relative, and friends better than I do. This issue has such momentum as when people get to know gays and lesbians in committed relationships much of the fear mongering just falls away. If you want to make a straight pragmatic episode you can argue to Democrats (and only Democrats), that defying the Speaker and the Governor is probably not the best way to go when it comes to securing other services for their constituents. Similarly, we're already recognizing same sex marriages from other jurisdictions, so there's the economic argument of wanting the money from the marriage-industrial complex to stay in Maryland rather than hopping the border to D.C.

[Update: Saw in an interview that Del. Alston is up for supporting civil unions for everyone, which is just fine, but we're probably too late in the process to make that switch without losing all momentum. But I wanted to properly reflect her position.]

It definitely angers me that we have to keep fighting this battle. But that's energy worth channeling into action. Gays and lesbians are people too, they can and do act as parents, and for those that want the full commitment their relationships deserves the acknowledgement of marriage as much as mine does.

[Update: I've called my two delegates. Went to answering machine in both cases. I left a message with my address (which is apparently important for establishing yourself as a constituent, hoping that they'd vote for the Civil Marriage Protection act and giving my own personal anecdote. Probably best to have something in mind like that before calling.]

February 25, 2011

Primary challenges are rare, and turnout in primaries is low. Those reasons, it seems to me, explain why primary system dynamics in practice have few consequences for political outcomes. I think the reform that anti-polarizers are looking for is multiple member House constituencies so that we’d have one or two Republicans from New York City, a smallish block of white southern Democrats, a conservative Mexican-American from Texas, etc. Then I think you might find that voting patterns became a bit less systematically correlated.

However, he misses something big. Multi-member alone doesn't do it, you also need a voting system that doesn't work off a simple plurality vote. As the thesis of Flores over at Fair Vote notes:

Simply put, multimember districts, even when fairly drawn, can still dilute minority voting strength. This is due to the fact that a bare plurality could potentially determine the gamut of Representatives for the region, gaining a disproportionate share of political power. Minorities may once again be left without representation, especially when their interests differ sharply from the majority. Therefore, multimember systems can be strikingly similar to at-large elections, as both share the same unsatisfactory sweep tendency.

In the past, Yglesias had correctly noted that single-transferable vote would do the job. The tranferable vote makes it safer to vote for your preferred candidate by transfering your vote to a second-best option if your ideal candidate loses in early rounds; similarly 'excess' votes for candidates elected in early rounds can be transferred. And here I will add a slight caveat to the title, single transferable vote isn't the only way to go proportional, it's just a solid proven method.

For a practical example, look at Maryland's House of Delegates, which elects candidates in three member districts. However, Maryland generally uses block voting which "is not a system for obtaining proportional representation; instead, the usual result is that the largest single group wins every seat by electing a slate of candidates, resulting in a landslide." Under a proportional system Maryland's House of Delegates would probably have more Republicans elected from the Democratic strongholds and I suspect we'd also see more realistic challenges to the Democratic party from the third parties to the left. [The third party element would add a wild card in terms of polarization, however since we're still talking about districts the system would still have a noteable cut off in terms of popular support needed to get more than a handful of seats unless they were organized on a regional basis. An actual Tea Partybased in the south east might happen, but in turn politicians like Indiana's Sen. Lugar would have an easier time of it in the rest of the country.]

February 21, 2011

Sen. Jim Rosapepe became the latest senator to commit to vote for marriage equality when the issue comes before the Maryland Senate. Counting Sen. Rosapepe, the bill now has 24 or 25 votes in the Senate depending on how one counts Sen. Joan Carter Conway with only one senator not yet publicly committed. In short, it should now have the votes needed to pass the Maryland Senate.

Maryland has been on a roll on this issue since Attorney General Gansler ruled that the state would recognize same sex marriages from other states. He's continued to speak out on the issue and in the last election, despite threats to the contrary, he didn't even have a primary or general election challenger.

While we're hardly the first state to take this step, I am still quite proud of Maryland and am glad by the strong support from Montgomery County that includes a variety of Chevy Chase officials that I'm more used to disagreeing with on Purple Line issues.

January 30, 2011

From what I'm reading from a range of sources, mostly Twitter, it sounds as if the security situation has deteriorated in Egypt with many blaming the former security services for the looting. U.S. citizens are being offered evacuation. From David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell's reporting for the NY Times, it sounds like a crackdown order is coming:

But the soldiers refused protesters’ pleas to open fire on the security police. And the police battered the protesters with tear gas, shotguns and rubber bullets. Everywhere in Cairo, soldiers and protesters hugged or snapped pictures together on top of military tanks. With the soldiers’ consent, protesters scrawled graffiti denouncing Mr. Mubarak on many of the tanks. “This is the revolution of all the people,” read a common slogan. “No, no, Mubarak” was another.

By Saturday night, informal brigades of mostly young men armed with bats, kitchen knives and other makeshift weapons had taken control, setting up checkpoints around the city.

Some speculated that the sudden withdrawal of the police from the cities — even some museums and embassies in Cairo were left unguarded — was intended to create chaos that could justify a crackdown.

The point applies most obviously in relation to oil. The idea that the US can legitimately use its military power to ensure continued access to oil resources rests, in large measure, on the (not entirely unfounded) assumption that those controlling the resources are a bunch of sheikhs and military adventurers who happened to be in the right place, with guns, at the right time. Without the Arab exception, the idea of oil as a special case, not subject to the ordinary assumption that resources are the property of the people in whose country they are found, will also be hard to sustain.

It is time to say that we will not support a regime that engages in a brutal crackdown and that free and fair elections are the only soft landing available. More important, it's time to call in the chips we have with the military to increase the odds that a crackdown order is not obeyed. The removal of the police forces made this a double or nothing situation; martial law without security services will likely prove reminiscent of the Tiananmen square massacre where police forces were similarly inadequate or unavailable.

[Minor grammar edits and a clarification on the term "Arab exception."]

But before we get into what might change, let's say what won't change: The 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster won't change. The right to unlimited debate, to speak until your knees buckle and your voice gives out, won't change. In reality, the rights of the minority won't change at all. In some ways, they'll even be increased.

Here's how the filibuster would change: Motions to proceed can't be filibustered because to do so is filibustering the debate itself. Filibusters themselves have to feature continuous debate and discussion. After a filibuster against a nomination is broken, there will be only two hours of post-cloture debate, as opposed to 30 hours, because nominations don't have amendments that need to be debated.

And there are changes to the Senate rules more broadly, too. Holds can no longer be secret, and the minority gets the right to offer at least three germane amendments on every bill (which addresses the Republican complaint that they are often denied the opportunity to offer amendments)

In essence, these would greatly accelerate the business of the Senate. This could make viable strategies such as forcing the other side to do a genuine filibuster as well as free up time towards any number of governing tasks. Put simply, being a legislature for a country of more than 300 million people is hard work and takes time to do right.

Both Klein and Ruth Marcus note that this may just prove to be the first shot in a set of filibuster changes. Marcus tries to spin this into a horror tale. My comments added in brackets:

Imagine the start of the 113th Congress in January 2013. House Speaker John Boehner's first act, once again, is to repeal what he calls "Obamacare." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, invoking the Udall precedent, moves to change the rules to eliminate the filibuster, and his caucus - over howls from the Democratic minority - agrees. The Republican Senate then votes to repeal the health-care bill, which is promptly signed . . . by President Palin. [This is generally called democracy. Matt Miller can explain more.]

…The filibuster could end up being a useful Democratic tool to block legislation that passes the Republican-controlled House and could, with a few Democratic defections, garner a bare majority in the Senate. [There's this thing called a veto. In addition, rules making is about the long game not the present circumstance.]

…But one little-noticed aspect of the Udall plan is that, as part of eliminating the filibuster on the motion to begin debate, it would guarantee Republicans more opportunity to offer amendments. Sounds fair - except that in practice more amendments translate into more chances to force endangered Democratic senators to take unpleasant votes. In short: more fodder for 30-second campaign ads. [Protecting seats is not a higher priority than implementing good policy. If the Democratic Congress could have done more to improve the economy, that would have swamped the impact of whatever ads the Republicans wanted to run.]

This filibuster fight is about whether we want our country to have a functioning legislative branch again. The new era may be scary but ultimately we have to have confidence in our policies. The last ten years have exposed a broken system, an executive branch that reserves the right to detain off the battlefield without charge, assassinate American citizens, and torture without threat of accountability, and the last two years have shown that it is barely possible to govern this country with a supermajority. As Miller argues, if we do not move towards a majority-rule system now we can see our future in California, budget crisis after budget crisis while no party has the tools necessary to fix things.

I have the great pleasure of having a really nice library at the White House. And I was tooling through some of the writings of some previous Presidents and I came upon this quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”

[As a final note, I do strongly believe that if we win here, as the President says, good policy is good politics. Dana Milbank does a good job of summarizing why. Given the economy, we’re likely to take some losses in 2010, but the voters will fight to protect the right to health care once they’ve had the chance to enjoy it.]

CHAIR: Guys? Guys!! It's 2 AM and we've got an award to give later today! What are we gonna do? We can't use Jimmy Carter again -- he was our emergency winner the last time we were stumped! If we don't do this right, we'll have less cedibility than the Grammys!!

But it would be folly for news organizations to ignore this story out of pettiness or snobbery. Though everyone involved in producing the ACORN expose had ideological ends, they used journalistic means to achieve them—in fact, hyperpartisan impulses that produce muckraking scoops are the rare variety that should be celebrated. Who cares whether a reporter or an activist happened to do the reporting? Everyone benefits when indefensible deeds are accurately exposed and the perpetrators made accountable…

He added, "But I also know how my journalist friends are going to react. And so my advice to James is this: You can put this thing out your way, but you should also offer the full audio and full transcript so that people can hear and see them in their entirety – sans edits. So they can judge for themselves."

A wise approach—I'm writing this column only after having read the full transcripts. (ACORN has said that the videos were “doctored, edited and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist ‘filmmaker’ James O’Keefe and his partner in crime”—and threatened to sue.)

I’ll reserve judgment until the full audio is out there. I do assume that there were also a good number of cases where Acorn offices properly rebuffed the guy. Also, the whole scandal during the election was BS, there were Acorn employees who made money by fabrication registrations but that was registration fraud to rip off Acorn and not election fraud. On the whole though, the organization does seem to have a genuine problem with people, admittedly often volunteers, acting in an official capacity at their office. If accurate this is a legit scandal, firing the workers is a good first step but it is a reasonable expectation that an org using federal funds wouldn’t have brought them on in the first place.

Even official capacity isn’t that limiting and frankly sometimes negotiations should be private or diplomatic/legislative agreements would never happen. I am actively considering being a public servant some day and while taping interactions with public seems reasonable, bugging my house, cell phone, or laptop would not be. Also, national security and spying aside, without such limits it would be rather tempting to bug people for information about how to win a contract or the other side’s political strategy. The limitation to journalists really doesn’t deal with this problem as that term isn’t necessarily that meaningful limiting in an era of blogs.

Update: Acorn has a press-release stating that in at least one of the videos the Acorn employee was basically satirizing the obviously implausible journalist. The specifics sound likely to me. I'd say that approach was likely a mistake, better to toss them out, but not a scandal by any means. (Hat tip, The American Scene commenter.)

August 26, 2009

A flawed man, who started unimpressively in life -- the college problems, the silver-spoon boy senator, everything involved with Chappaquiddick -- but redeemed himself, in the eyes of all but the committed haters, with his bravery and perseverance and commitment to the long haul. And his big, open heart. A powerful, brave, often-wounded animal at last brought down.

Perhaps games, and the audience for games, would be better served by design that emphasizes values beyond fun, but it’s clearly a difficult assignment. A notable undercurrent at this year’s festival was a sense that the current crop of games for change aren’t reaching their intended audiences. Most of these games are perceived by players as preachy, and even their developers admit they often fail to match the engaging gameplay offered by commercial games.

He also casts doubt on the idea that a new generation that grew up on games would be more inclined to take games seriously given his experience with some freshmen regarding his class on video games. That said, Abbott found hope in the increasing awareness of the value of connections with commercial developers. From my experience with documentary films, I do think production values definitely matter. This doesn’t mean that serious games should be high budget, that’s impractical, but they should have a professional look.

On the fun breakdown, I’m inclined to think engaging is a better word. To find an audience beyond the equivalent of textbooks and corporate training videos people have to want to play serious games.

Making serious games engaging gets to the mention of multiplayer in my title. Economics and political science both heavily involve themselves in game theory with the classic example being the prisoner’s dilemma. The mechanics there are not particularly impressive, cooperate or betray, but I recall little grumbling when people paired up to experiment with it. I think that’s because the challenge and competition of playing with another person can up the engagement value substantially. This could even be faked I suspect, but probably only for one-off games.

The basic logic here is straightforward. American elected leaders and their appointees have the right to be wrong, to break the law when we’re frightened. Richard Cohen made this argument explicitly, albeit in a manner completely lacking in self-awareness. Those who favor unaccountability often also praise the pardoning of Nixon who clearly stated his claim that if the President does it, it’s not illegal. The fact that these measures violate international law is probably not even a secondary consideration here, after all, who is going to make us face accountability? Spain isn’t really powerful enough to do more than keep people out of Europe . None of this is especially surprising and I suspect that despite the extraordinary nature of 9/11 the principle of the executive accountable only to the electorate isn’t going to go away.

All in all, I pray we can win the fight on torture, but I do not believe that the self-correcting measures on American hegemony can prevent future disastrous mistakes. A few months ago I attended a great talk by Spencer Ackerman that essentially argued that the tools of military dominance inevitably corrupt and that unless we’re willing to put some of those tools down the cycle will keep repeating itself. I have no problem with American military superiority, but I think liberals will better spend their energy directing resources away from supremacy than in trying to direct the tools of military supremacy to the greater good of the world. If torture is giving our elites this much trouble, how are we going to manage the tougher calls?

In fact, I’m bothered by Ross Douthat’s output for similar reasons. Both him and Sullivan have a “gated-community” outlook; “acceptability” is regularly defined as “what’s best for me.” And again, while this can make for compelling reading on issues which are quite personal, it also leads Douthat to - for example - describe our incarceration heavy approach to crime as “largely vindicated by events,” completely oblivious to the immense costs said approach has had on poor communities and communities of color (Which Ta-Nehisi Coates illustrates with a heartbreaking story of a friend gunned down by police). Indeed, it’s precisely because of their “gated-community conservativism” that I’m skeptical of their long-term project of revitalizing conservatism by means of turning its attentions to minorities, and working-class American. Doing so requires approaching policy concerns with a broader public in mind, and neither of them has really reached that point (though, in fairness, Douthat is making progress).

Ta-Nehisi Coates also has done a defense of self-interested politics". I tend to agree with him, although he's a better writer than I am by far so I'll just quote him instead.

I firmly believe that the case against racism is not just that it's unfair to black people, but that it doesn't benefit the country as a whole. When I look at the large numbers of black men in the justice system, I'm not very interested in how much the justice system hates blacks. I'm interested in whether our justice policy is in the best interest of the country. Perhaps, I define "interest" too broadly. I include in that definition, not simply your short and long-term well being, but how you want to live your life. I hear people say that they support "black issues" even when they aren't in their interest. Hmm, I guess. But that's like saying it wasn't in my interest to be a writer. I should have gone to law school. Certainly I would have made more money. But I include in my interest what I want to see out the world, what makes me happy, what makes me smile, what I like and love. I guess it's not in my interest to spend a whole day watching football games--I could be making money. But it certainly makes me happy.

I don't buy Sullivan’s argument that innovation would be sacrificed, but I think wanting innovation in part from personal experience is a perfectly legit motivation. The thing here is that those benefiting from radical new health care innovations are a minority versus those who benefit from being able to rely on health care being available. That's a majority whose interest deserve to be respected, but also kept in perspective. So long as he's honestly and clearly arguing from personal experience and self-interest I've got no problem with it. The problem is stuff like the dishonest No Exit article published when he was editing TNR which was full of lies about Clinton-care.

This isn't to say I don't think some people need to think consistently about the greater good, but I don't think those people will ever be the majority of the public discourse. Also, the ability to try move beyond self-interest is immensely helped by privilege. Hence the Red State, Blue State findings that the culture war tends to among rich voters.

March 15, 2009

Ross Douthat has a post that concludes in a way that makes me glad he'll be one of the columnist I'll be arguing against over at the NY Times. (For a far more critical take, check out Armanda Marcotte over at Pandagon or the critics Delong cites. I think that social conservatives make up a large enough section of the country that there should be some place for them on op-ed pages. That said, if there's one the critics find that's a better writer or more trustworthy than Douthat, then they should feel free to name said person.)

How much do you prize equality and ease of life? The more you do, the more you'll favor a European approach to the relationship between state and society. How much do you prize voluntarism, entrepreneurship, and the value of lives oriented around service to one's family, and to God? The more you do, the more you'll find to like in the American arrangement. Where this debate is concerned, I'm proud to stand with Charles Murray - but I don't think that we should labor under the false hope that scientific advances are going to tilt the argument dramatically in our direction.

I'd quibble a bit with the wording. I personally would substitute "alleviation of suffering" for "ease of life." I tend to think Americans could use more vacation time, but I think work itself is very important. Below a certain number of hours, let's say 40 per week, including unpaid domestic work and volunteering, we'd be better off increasing the amount of satisfaction than further cutting back the time spent. People tend to go a bit nuts when they're outright idle for prolonged periods.

Second I question the term voluntarism. I think it should be qualified to resource voluntarism or something like that. Economic necessity can be as great a compulsion as laws and taxes. Also, regulating sexual morality doesn't really seem to be consistent with general voluntarism.

The other principles could all use elaboration, but I think as is they describe things pretty well.

On this one, I proudly stand with the European approach. I also think that Chait easily has the better argument than Charles Murray (here's one of many take downs of his Bell Curve book) for the degree that his favored policies are based on empiricism. Last time I checked, the American approach just plunged the globe into a devastating recession and America continues to be the only OECD nation that doesn't manage to offer some form of universal health care. It does come down to what you prefer at some point, but many of our policies are so bizarre and counter productive that there's nearly pareto optimal European alternatives available.

So why aren't we doing something that would benefit postively most everyone? Because those it wouldn't benefit would be at the top and even if it doesn't hurt their income it would decrease their relative status. Yglesias explains:

In the US and in Europe, income level is fairly predictive of voting behavior and this is neither a coincidence nor the reflection of an abstract disagreement about the value of “voluntarism.” It reflects the fact that politics is, among other things, a concrete contest over concrete economic interests. In a broad sense, both the American and European models work quite well compared to living standards enjoyed in other parts of the world. But in comparison, the models work differently for different kinds of people because different people have different interests. I don’t think, for example, that America’s high child poverty rate reflects American preference for “service to one’s family” over “ease of life.”

The rich, not the poor, are more likely to vote their values (see Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State). That holds with traditional religious stuff but I think it might also explain the fervor of some rich egalitarians. But I think Douthat gets at some of the competing values that are being weighed by the upper middle class. Note that he says "service to family" not "well being of the family." There's a difference between the two. If individuals have access to resources they need to survive without relying on the family, they're likely to value service to family lower, aren't they? Strictly speaking, we're also talking service to traditional gender roles as well, I didn't quibble with that above because I think even in the defenders formulation we're obviously talking about patriarcy. In any event, their offering a pattern of service, we're working towards results. This strikes me as very favorable philisophical ground to argue on.

There are some signs that religious Americans have become more
tolerant of those who hold different religious views. But by no means
has religious intolerance faded away.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by James Gibson, based on a
national survey he conducted in 2007. (For an extended overview of the
results, click here.)
In brief, based on survey respondents’ answers to a series of
questions, Gibson created an index of “religious traditionalism,” some
defining characteristics of which are frequent attendance at religious
services and belief in God and the devil. The respondents were also
asked about their willingness to deny one or more political rights
(e.g., to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public
office) to atheists...

Gibson speculates that the link between religious traditionalism and
political intolerance may “become more serious for American politics in
the future,” not less so... "Future research should therefore focus on methods by which all
citizens — religionists included — can be persuaded to value tolerance
more highly.”

Absent changing the mind of religious traditionalists, I think Gibson's speculation was confirmed by a recent survey. 15% (up from 8% in 1990) of the population now says they have no religion meanwhile the rising numbers calling themselves born again or evangelical might indicate a rise in those hewing towards religious conservatism. I don't think most of those holding no religion will mirror the desire to restrict the organization rights of the religious, although that would be an interesting study to see. Even if it isn't mirrored, I think Douthat is right to suggest that the survey indicates that the culture war is likely to get hotter in the near future.

However, what I really would like to see is this study done for ideology the restrictions that fanatics are willing to put on athiests, "to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public
office," have been deployed against political groups before. In America that sort of thing has been done to socialists, let alone communists. Of course in Germany, such rules are presently employed against neo-Nazis. Their reasons are understandable but doing exluding anyone from participation, rather than vehemently out-competing them, runs against liberal pluralistic ideals. Not saying Germany is necessarily wrong here, just that I think the burden of proof for that sort of policy should be very high.

I wonder whether ideologues feel this as strongly as religious traditionalists. I wonder which systems of belief are most prone to it. Is it consisitently mirrored or does it sometimes hold on only one side? This issue is truly vital in young democracies but I don't think it's fully understood even in the developed world.

March 10, 2009

I think that the prevalence of the social conservative worldview,
broadly defined, is on a long-term downward trajectory in the United
States...

What this means for traditionalists is that the best
they can hope for is a national government with minimum scope of
authority, because it will tend to use whatever authority it has for
ends that they don’t like.

As I’ve argued
previously, I think that a proper understanding of libertarian thought
should call for restraint in imposing uniform national rules, even some
rules designed to prevent localities from restricting some individual
autonomy.

This alliance weakened a bit under Bush, hence talk of liberaltarians. Libertarians are big on the net, not so big in the electorate, so this isn't really a pressing problem, but it is worth discussing briefly. The local restrictions on individual autonomy is key, without those I can't imagine the social conservatives being that excited about the alliance. Many things liberals want aren't the opposite of traditional values, same-sex marriage is in many ways a conservative thing and it in no way restricts the availability of opposite-sex marriages. To really get excited about something, you either need to be personally repressed or get the chance to repress someone else.

To me, this sounds like a recipe for the Republicans going further down the road of becoming a Southern regional party, assuming social conservatives don't change how they feel about immigration. I can't imagine the libertarians would be that excited about the social restrictions where they live, so the alliance would really rely on geographical separation. Since libertarians aren't a major voting block, their influence in other regions would be limited.

So, can't say I'm particularly worried about their alliance continuing on this basis. Probably good for most of the country, bad for the South, and there's no restrictions on internal migration in the U.S. I tend to see economic populism as the approach that has both more peril and potential.

March 04, 2009

One of the reasons that longstanding conflicts are so hard to resolve is that the militants on both sides both benefit by provoking one another. Since counter-insurgency tends to rarely result in a decisive elimination of the foe, even though these groups are killing each other they ultimately enable each other. Both societies are dragged down but the militants get to rule in hell.

So, how can this sort of vicious cycle be used for good? Well, as everyone is noting, the Democratic leadership and Rush Limbaugh are now both playing this game. Here's Jason Zengerle explaining how it works:

The thing that makes Rush different from
past GOP boogeymen--such as Newt and Bush--is that, because his bottom
line is ratings (rather than votes), the Dems' demonization of him is
actually kind of good for him...

Which
is why Republicans' best move, at this point, is probably just to
ignore Limbaugh: don't denounce him (and then inevitably recant), don't
praise him; and don't appear on his show. And maybe hope that Clear
Channel--which pays Limbaugh his $50 million a year salary and whose parent company just posted a $5 billion loss--goes broke.

I'm guessing Limbaugh is still a profit center for Clear Channel and will continue to be so unless his ego and demands for compensation get bigger than his ratings.

So what are the logical limits of this strategy? Limbaugh's listener numbers probably have an upper bound in the current political climate and I have to imagine he's running fairly near it. There's only so many hours in the day and after a while it isn't news any more. That said, it should be a repeatable trick after this controversy dies down. If necessary, one could also switch to a different demagogue, say Ann Coulter, to keep things fresh. As a side note, if that happens, let's stay away from the misogyny people. Many of the gender-based cracks against her are not clever and ironic because she's such a hater, they're just lame attacks against an easy target. And yes, I include Jon Stewart in that, I love you man, but that one C-PAC attack was beneath you and hurt an otherwise brilliant segment.

Limbaugh could easily stop this any time he wants to, but so long as he personally benefits I doubt he'll care about what he's doing to the party.

Normally of course the Republicans could just put a stop to this. Republicans play this game with Democratic entertainers on a regular basis and it works to a degree. However, our politicians also know how to play the distancing game. If anything, I think we tend to go to far in slamming our entertainers but we've moderated that in recent years. Obama is much more resistant to the urge to Sister Souljah someone than prior leaders. We're at a point now where the choice to defend or distance goes more to the substance of the remarks, and that's a good thing.

However, the Republicans haven't manged to distance themselves because anyone who criticizes gets brutally smacked down. I don't really get why that happens so it's difficult to say how that system can break down. My best guess as to why this is happening is that the Republican base is sufficiently homogenous that those entertainers in a position to challenge Rush don't have distinct fan bases to carry them through. On the other hand, I think Jason Zengerle is wrong about the utility of ignoring him. If enough Republicans ignore him it would break his power, but there's a collective action problem here. The more people that don't appear on his show, the greater the chance to gain publicity from an alliance with him. Moderate Republicans are probably best off breaking with the party or ignoring him, but that won't break his power.

Finally, what are the costs and benefits of this strategy for the Dems? Well we're probably maintaining the radicalism of the Republican base. That said, the Republicans have already practically maxed out their party unity in the House and with several exceptions in the Senate. They're getting serious diminishing returns from the radicalization, so this isn't a huge problem so long as the Dittoheads don't go literally militant. This is probably helping us with moderate and independent voters, but they'll ultimately vote based on the state of the economy so that benefit is short term. As Nate Silver says this is really about three or four votes in the Senate and I think he's right. We need to continue to invite Republicans to vote with us and talk with us while influencing their constiuents to pressure them to cooperate.

Right now, the Democratic Party is in the midst of an audacious domestic project. In addition to dealing with the economic crisis, we're trying to take the high ground and remake America as a solvent social democracy. The core of this project is health care as it is orders of magnitude easier to defend well designed entitlements than to implement them. This isn't as true with carbon cap and trade, but if we get a job rich green sector going than there will be powerful interests fighting to defend the new regulatory regime.

In the longer term, sparring with GOP entertainers is fine, but not at this level. We ultimately are going to have to work to deradicalize the segment of the population that actually thought George W. Bush did a good job. Changing demographics will help with that of course, but in the medium term a two party system where one of the parties is nuts is an extremely dangerous phenomenon.

But aside from ambition what's also vital though is that in this blitz we take prisoners and show quarter. Giving the actual political leaders, not the entertainers, of the other side a respectful hearing is a low cost strategy. Politics is often personal in the Senate and is far more heterogenous with governors and we should exploit that. Real concessions should be limited to those cases where we get something real in return but for matters of tone the public likes Obama's outreaches even when they aren't returned.

So on the whole, I like this strategy. Let Limbaugh have his ratings, we'll be busy implementing a second New Deal. Sounds like a good trade to me.

February 05, 2009

Picked this up from both Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The President is starting to try to go public to pressure Congress to pass the stimulus bill. He used the opportunity of signing the new S-CHIP bill into law yesterday afternoon to get a start on it.

"In the past few days, I've heard criticisms of this plan that frankly echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis in the first place. The notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems. That we can address this enormous crisis with half steps and piecemeal measures and tinkering around the edges. That we can ignore fundamental challenges like the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive. I reject these theories, and by the way, so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

Klein also quotes a few of the good bits on health care, where he also strongly took the offensive and is continues to work to lay the groundwork. My worry had been that Obama was largely unwilling to go on the attack except for rare occasions. That had been his campaign tactic and it worked pretty well. I think it was a mistake that he wasn’t more aggressive, albeit respectively aggressive, with courting public pressure on members of Congress prior to the troubles in the Senate. As a result, the current bill is probably about as good as we’re going to get. But I don’t think it’s too late to get something of roughly the same impact as the current bill, even though it’s a flawed one. This S-Chip speech alone won’t do it, but a series of jabs as good as this one or a few higher profile efforts might just do the job.

Still, in essentially passing off both narrative and literal control of the contents of the package to the Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration may have played it too cute by half. Obama is popular; Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid aren't. The trajectory of the bill might have been different if Obama had devoted a prime time speech toward selling it, with graphs and pie charts and the like. But there hasn't been a Big Obama Moment like that -- a show of force -- something that really resonated outside the Beltway. The closest Obama came, oddly enough, was during his inaugural address, but the references to the stimulus there were abstract, oblique.

The upside is that Obama himself is likely to emerge from the whole affair relatively unscathed.

Obama’s real power is the ability to ‘go public,’ a coin termed back to describe Reagan’s techniques for appealing to public opinion to put pressure on his political opponents. Instead, he played it conservative and let the Republicans outmaneuver Reid in the Senate, big surprise there. Pelosi got her bill past, though instead of letting her run up the margins and start with a strong point, we made concessions in exchange for no Republican votes. As Ezra Klein points out, the new era of responsibility has meant losing Daschle and nominating Judd Gregg for Treasury did nothing to help the passage of the stimulus and so far gained very little from a policy perspective. If the recovery doesn’t start by 2010 the elections results are going to be very bad for the Democrats and rightfully so.

My one source of hope is that the President has been routinely underestimated by basically everyone. His no drama style has given him a lot of endurance as his adversaries flail and embarrass themselves. However, people will ultimately judge success by the condition of the economy, not the optics. Perhaps Obama has written the this fight off as a relative loser and will be focusing on the coming health care debate or the infrastructure bill. He might be able to achieve some of the economic effects by that means in addition to better management by Treasury officials and such. However, the clock is now running.

My fear is reflected in the title. That he thinks bipartisanship will save us. Fortunately, the President is a very smart man and if he thought that a week ago I’d be surprised if he still thinks it now.